• Tiny probes could sail to outer planets

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Wed Feb 23 21:30:44 2022
    Tiny probes could sail to outer planets with the help of low-power
    lasers

    Date:
    February 23, 2022
    Source:
    American Chemical Society
    Summary:
    Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New
    Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to
    Proxima Centauri b, the closest habitable planet to Earth, would
    require thousands of years with even the biggest rockets. Now,
    researchers calculate that low-power lasers on Earth could launch
    and maneuver small probes equipped with silicon or boron nitride
    sails, propelling them to much faster speeds than rocket engines.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe
    took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b,
    the closest habitable planet to Earth, would require thousands of years
    with even the biggest rockets. Now, researchers calculate in ACS' Nano Lettersthat low-power lasers on Earth could launch and maneuver small
    probes equipped with silicon or boron nitride sails, propelling them to
    much faster speeds than rocket engines.


    ========================================================================== Instead of catching wind, like the sails on boats, "laser sails" would
    catch laser beams and could, in principle, push spacecraft to nearly
    the speed of light. Scientists have been working on this concept for a
    while. For example, one privately funded project called the Breakthrough Starshot initiative aims to send a small, sailed probe weighing about a
    gram to Proxima Centauri b with a flight taking only 20 years. It would
    be propelled to 20% of light speed by a 100 GW, kilometer-square laser
    array. Ho-Ting Tung and Artur Davoyan wondered if much lower-power,
    smaller laser arrays could find use in applications where conventional
    electric and chemical rockets are now used. The lasers might someday be
    able to adjust the orbit of satellites after launch or propel tiny sailed probes on interplanetary or interstellar missions, without requiring
    large amounts of fuel.

    The researchers performed calculations to show that even lasers with
    powers of about 100 kW and array sizes of about a meter could power a
    1-gram probe at velocities far exceeding the current record, with only
    minutes to hours of laser illumination. According to their calculations,
    the lasers could maneuver small probes between different Earth orbits in
    only a day, which is not possible with current electrical and chemical
    rockets. The team determined that the best materials for the laser sails,
    which allowed high reflectivity and rapid cooling, were silicon nitride
    and boron nitride structured at the nanoscale.

    Finally, the researchers calculated that these tiny laser-propelled probes could travel fast enough to escape the solar system, reaching 5 times
    higher velocities than the New Horizons probe. These prototype sailed spacecraft, driven by low-power lasers, could pave the wave for fast
    space exploration and future interstellar flight, the researchers say.

    The authors acknowledge funding from NASA, the Air Force Office of
    Scientific Research, UCLA and the Hellman Society of Fellows.

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by American_Chemical_Society. Note:
    Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Ho-Ting Tung, Artur R. Davoyan. Low-Power Laser Sailing for
    Fast-Transit
    Space Flight. Nano Letters, 2022; 22 (3): 1108 DOI: 10.1021/
    acs.nanolett.1c04188 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220223085447.htm

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